DECEMBER 11TH
WEEKLY SCHEDULE
FOR
AP ENGLISH LITERATURE


Congratulations on an amazing and wonderful performance! You are all fabulous! (No wonder you guys were exhausted! But your exhaustion and hours of rehearsal and pain were worth it because you were all really, really wonderful - no kidding! Now, back to Shakespeare!)

Some general commentary regarding the class:

I will check out to you a copy of Dostoevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN, and the text book, ENGLAND IN LITERATURE, plus a reading syllabus for the text book. (Don’t lose the book - it’s expensive!)

We will have class the last week of the vacation, probably for five days from 8 or 9 to about twelve or one each day. It will be grueling; it will be intense, but it will be necessary.

BUT, I have a proposition for you:

How many of you would be able to attend about ten hours of class (approximately two hours a day - say 12 to 2 pm) the last week of January? We could work on FRANKENSTEIN and the poetry from the 1600’s through the Romantic Period. Then, I turn you loose to work on the short form and do the assigned reading. We meet again the last week of February for about two hours a day for five days where we begin work on CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. Your long form for CRIME AND PUNISHMENT will be due the middle of March. Otherwise, it will be a grueling twenty hours (8 am to 12 pm) the last week of February.


Monday, December 11th:

Read Act lV. I hope to have the contemporary version ready for you today.

Tonight, for homework, using five of your new Unit Four words, write sentences with adverbial clauses - remember those? They use subordinate conjunctions: although, even though, etc. and act like adverbs, describing under what condition the action is done or when, or where or to what extent.


Tuesday, December 12th:

Collect last night’s homework.

Today is the last day for any outstanding work - and I mean that in its full polysemetic way - to be turned in. That includes the Unit Four vocabulary.

Finish reading Act Four - I hope!

Your Act Four test will be due on Wednesday, December 13th.
Wednesday, December 13th:

Your Act Four test is due today.

We will unsheathe our rapiers and start swashbuckling through Act Five. I will pass out the Act Five test to you and the contemporary version of the same.

Tonight, for homework, using five of your new Unit Four words, write sentences with adjective clauses - those sentences use relative pronouns: who, whom, whose, that and sometimes where. The adjective clause is set off by commas, is not always important to the sense of the sentence and acts as an adjective describing the noun that the relative pronoun is next to.



Thursday, December 14th:

Collect last night’s homework.

Continue reading and swashbuckling!



Friday, December 15th:

We will finish the play and watch the last act of Kenneth Branagh’s HAMLET.

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